As you probably know the winning work of the Enel Contemporanea Award 2011 was “Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes“ by the Belgian artist Carsten Höller. Is now possible to see it at MACRO, Rome, until 26th February. The carousels move very slowly, in opposite directions, allowing people to freely get on and off, while visual lines in an apparently intersecting pattern create an overall destabilizing effect, in an experience that distorts spatial perceptions.
Carsten Höller, Bruce Mau and Paola Pivi were the artists invited to submit a project by the Artistic Director of the Award, Francesco Bonami, at Venice Biennale. The jury did a good job: Carsten Höller thinks of art as a cognitive tool, investigating objective reality and its perception by using disorientation as an indispensable characteristic of all his works, from the rotating mushrooms suspended from the ceiling of the Prada Foundation in 2000 to the five steel chutes of Test Site installed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London in 2006, classic contemporary special effects that are still having super feedbacks from the art market.
Selected by Ingrid Melano
